Quote:
Originally Posted by bEdhEd
Are you saying that you guys were trying to turn down the whole shaft as it is COTS, or did you cut it into smaller lengths for their specific use on the robot, then turn them down? Does the shaft have to be that long because it's part of your design?
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We have 4 shafts that are 1/2in diameter and 38in long. They support the linear motion on our grabber. Changing them from steel to aluminum shaves off about 4 lbs, which is unfortunately necessary for us this year. The steel shafts we were using have a diameter of 0.498 in and the aluminum rods we want to replace them with are 0.504 in. The linear bearings don't slide on the aluminum rods, so we want to reduce the aluminum rods to the diameter of the steel shafts (.498 in), effectively shaving off 0.006 in consistently around / across the rod.
Even with a live center, and even if done 1/2 at a time, the shaft will wobble too much to use a normal cutting tool. Thus, we tried putting it in the lathe and running it while passing sandpaper along it. This was effective, but seems sketchy and dangerous. Any ideas on how to do this better / find cheaper Al shafts / do our sandpaper method more safely?